Air Raiders

ATARI 2600 CARTRIDGE [#5861]

Release 1983

Produced by Aph Technology Consultants for Mattel Electronics

Program: Larry Zwick

CATALOG DESCRIPTION (January 1983, Consumer Electronics Show)

As the pilot of your bomber, your mission is to blast the enemy out of the sky. Zero in on enemy planes, bank right or left, climb and dive. It's a hit! But be sure to keep track of your fuel and ammo, you may have to land to refuel. (One player.)

DEVELOPMENT HISTORY

Of the seventeen games Mattel released for the Atari 2600, this is the only one that is 100% original, the others all being based on or related to an Intellivision release. (Adventures of TRON began as a translation of TRON Maze-A-Tron. Kool-Aid Man shares the title character with Intellivision Kool-Aid Man, although the game play is different.)

A PAL version was also produced by APh for international release.

APh proposed doing an Intellivision version of Air Raiders, but Mattel passed, probably because of similarities to the Intellivoice game, B-17 Bomber, then in development.


RUNNING CHANGE: The original production run of the cartridge had the difficulty switch programmed as A for easy and B for hard. This is backwards from other cartridges, so it was reversed in a new production run. The original cartridges were never supposed to be released. Fearing that some might have been accidentally shipped to stores, though, Mattel Electronics operators were informed of the first version just in case somebody got one and called up, confused. It's unknown if any of the original cartridges ever did reach the market.